New Constitution Builder Tool for Incorporated Societies

Published 11 November 2019

Need help drafting a set of rules for your incorporated society?

The Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) have designed a ‘do-it-yourself’ constitution builder for societies. It’s an online tool that will help you produce a draft set of rules (formally known as a constitution).

We worked with MBIE to make sure that if you want to be a charitable incorporated society, the rules will meet most of our requirements. If you want to be a charity, you still need to ensure your rules have exclusively charitable purposes(external link).

The tool works for groups that are, or would like to be registered as charities, and those that just want to be an incorporated society. It’s also useful for existing incorporated societies looking to amend their rules.

If you want to be a charity then you can select that option at the start. The tool will take you through a number of clauses that are labelled mandatory, recommended or optional. Select which clauses are relevant to your incorporated society and fill in the appropriate information. Once complete, the tool will create a draft document that will have most of the content needed for a set of rules suitable for both MBIE and Charities Services.

Find out more and access the constitution builder here: https://isb.companiesoffice.govt.nz/constitutionbuilder/startscreen/(external link)  

To read more about what is needed in your rules for registration as a charity, you can check out our page on Rules and the Charities Act(external link).